[ModPack] dZ_Consolidated_Company_Commander

[ryanzag]

If people are using precision shot every turn then it's not expensive enough. I'ts pretty expensjve now (35 morale points IIRC)... but it could easily be pushed up another 5

I don't think that will help - usually morale ends up going max pretty quick as soon as you start killing enemies, especially vehicles and turrets. Precision shot itself helps here, as it lets you pop a mech each time you use it by concentrating fire on center torso with a close range spec assault mech. This gives ~30? morale back right away just for using precision shot, letting you use the next one.

EDIT: I guess a lot of that comes from most mechs you fight having 50% or even 25% armor to start with, making them paper thin.

 

[Dizzy_XC]

Aimed shots used to almost come up every turn because of retiring enemy assets every turn, but I nerfed the morale numbers so its now a much slower pace. I have some questions about morale.

Below, I have added // to denote questions and comments.

"MoraleConstants":
{
"MoraleMax": 50, // Why is Moral max in FuryConstants 100. Why 50 here?
"CanUseInspireLevel": 25, // What does this do?
"InspireCost": 0, // What does this do?
"AutoInspire": true, // What does this do?
"InspirationAccelerationMultiplier": 0.0, // What does this do? It's set at 0.5 under FuryConstants.

and

"FuryConstants": // So these values are only for multiplayer or skirmish or what?

 

[me987654]

I don't think that will help - usually morale ends up going max pretty quick as soon as you start killing enemies, especially vehicles and turrets. Precision shot itself helps here, as it lets you pop a mech each time you use it by concentrating fire on center torso with a close range spec assault mech. This gives ~30? morale back right away just for using precision shot, letting you use the next one.

EDIT: I guess a lot of that comes from most mechs you fight having 50% or even 25% armor to start with, making them paper thin.

Yeah that's a separate issue.... at some point I need to either figure out how to up those values some or find a mod that already does so.

I do wonder how changing some of the morale +/- events would impact the available of points to use precision shot/vigilance.

In the end it's not THAT big of a change.... personally as long as we have precision shot in a place where it's not one of the main things you do I'm fine with it.

 

[Gliese58i]

I think the abilities are cool and fun to use but right now you either hardly use them at all (first part of the game) or you use them all the time (later stages). I like the idea at least on paper to have a fixed cooldown. I like being able to use these abilities and not feel bad for losing a party-wide aim buff. As for morale on the strategical layer I think it's quite poorly implemented in vanilla. I think HBS had ideas for it but never fully got there before release. Events traits and morale all of these things could use some love. Look at your mercenaries and all their traits leading me to think of other games developed or published by PDX where such things are hugely important and a fun element of those games.

I think HBS shot for the stars and landed on the moon in terms of ambitions for this game and I wouldn't mind if this modpack helped them get there if even just a tiny bit. In any case I don't think morale is where it could be atm, not even close.

 

[Gliese58i]

Aimed shots used to almost come up every turn because of retiring enemy assets every turn, but I nerfed the morale numbers so its now a much slower pace. I have some questions about morale.

Below, I have added // to denote questions and comments.

"MoraleConstants":
{
"MoraleMax": 50, // Why is Moral max in FuryConstants 100. Why 50 here?
"CanUseInspireLevel": 25, // What does this do?
"InspireCost": 0, // What does this do?
"AutoInspire": true, // What does this do?
"InspirationAccelerationMultiplier": 0.0, // What does this do? It's set at 0.5 under FuryConstants.

and

"FuryConstants": // So these values are only for multiplayer or skirmish or what?

Let me take a very uneducated guess. Every point of morale is 2% on the bar, so that's why 50 is max.
CanUseInspirelevel: 25 this means that your mechwarriors are inspired at 50% or above on the morale bar.
Inspirecost: I guess you can mod in a cost of some kind to activate it?
Autoinspire: Would then have something to do with the above
Last item: If you get hit your morale bar fills faster.

I could be totally off on all of these.

 

[ryanzag]

I think HBS shot for the stars and landed on the moon in terms of ambitions for this game and I wouldn't mind if this modpack helped them get there if even just a tiny bit. In any case I don't think morale is where it could be atm, not even close.

Agree, but I think the solution don proposed earlier in the thread will get it there, it covers everything. Just a matter of implementing it!

 

[don Zappo]

I have the .dll written for the change to Mechtech and MedTech skill upon the financial report. It's... just not working. Ah, the joys of troubleshooting while programming!

 

[n3ctaris]

Looking for feedback:

I'm about to dive into making a mod that adds 'elite' variants to the pool of mechs. These variants will be of one of the base chassis (including JK's) and will include an optimized build (max armor, better alpha's, clearer role builds), they will also include some LosTech sprinkled throughout. There are a couple of limitations/issues that are frustrating but not the end of the world:

Issue 1 - Inventory of mech parts unclear
Creating mechdef variants that reference the same chassisdef as other mechdef's will create a scenario when it looks like you have multiple copies of the same 'parts' in the inventory. You can see this in the vanilla game if you get parts of Victoria's King Crab. It can 'appear' like you have enough parts but they will be in 2 pools say 1/3 king crab and 2/3 king crab.

The options for resolution as I see it are:
- Do nothing, let these 'pools' of mechs pile up till you get enough to put one together.
- Create new chassisdef's to go with all the new mechdef variants. (this leads us to issue 2)

Issue 2 - Reconstruction of elite variants leads to 'free' LosTech
When these new variants get rebuilt by yang, they come fully stocked with all the toys no matter how well you dismantle them. This might not be an issue for our mod pack since each mech part comes partially or fully destroyed (dZ can you confirm). Either way, there is not much I can do about this. If we want some LosTech to be salvageable, then it needs to be on the mechs, which means it needs to be a part of their 'stock' build.

Issue(?) 3 - Further dilution of the mech pool
This could be an issue, or maybe not. But essentially the more mechdef's and chassisdef's that you have in the game, the harder it is to put together a full mech. Personally, I like this it makes each playthrough unique when you end up with a different roster each time, others might find this frustrating. Again, nothing I can really do to solve this issue that I'm aware of.

I am leaning towards creating all new chassisdef's and mechdef's just for ease of understanding which incomplete mechs you have in your inventory. Thoughts?

 

[n3ctaris]

I have the .dll written for the change to Mechtech and MedTech skill upon the financial report. It's... just not working. Ah, the joys of troubleshooting while programming!

Hey don, can you update your 'design' post for the morale rebuild? I'd like to see where your head is at after all the feedback.

 

[n3ctaris]

@don Zappo Did you see the ColorLOSmod was updated?

 

[ryanzag]

Looking for feedback:

I'm about to dive into making a mod that adds 'elite' variants to the pool of mechs. These variants will be of one of the base chassis (including JK's) and will include an optimized build (max armor, better alpha's, clearer role builds), they will also include some LosTech sprinkled throughout. There are a couple of limitations/issues that are frustrating but not the end of the world:

Issue 1 - Inventory of mech parts unclear
Creating mechdef variants that reference the same chassisdef as other mechdef's will create a scenario when it looks like you have multiple copies of the same 'parts' in the inventory. You can see this in the vanilla game if you get parts of Victoria's King Crab. It can 'appear' like you have enough parts but they will be in 2 pools say 1/3 king crab and 2/3 king crab.

The options for resolution as I see it are:
- Do nothing, let these 'pools' of mechs pile up till you get enough to put one together.
- Create new chassisdef's to go with all the new mechdef variants. (this leads us to issue 2)

Issue 2 - Reconstruction of elite variants leads to 'free' LosTech
When these new variants get rebuilt by yang, they come fully stocked with all the toys no matter how well you dismantle them. This might not be an issue for our mod pack since each mech part comes partially or fully destroyed (dZ can you confirm). Either way, there is not much I can do about this. If we want some LosTech to be salvageable, then it needs to be on the mechs, which means it needs to be a part of their 'stock' build.

Issue(?) 3 - Further dilution of the mech pool
This could be an issue, or maybe not. But essentially the more mechdef's and chassisdef's that you have in the game, the harder it is to put together a full mech. Personally, I like this it makes each playthrough unique when you end up with a different roster each time, others might find this frustrating. Again, nothing I can really do to solve this issue that I'm aware of.

I am leaning towards creating all new chassisdef's and mechdef's just for ease of understanding which incomplete mechs you have in your inventory. Thoughts?

Personally I'd prefer if the elite mechs did not drop chassis pieces at all. If they're dropping Lostech, then the salvage of their lostech items should be more than enough reward.

As far as naming goes, if you check SARNA you can see custom variants usually have their own name - eg, Catapult CPLT-J Jester as a custom 'hero' mech. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Catapult

EDIT: They should maybe drop some sellable item called 'Customized Mech Wreck' that could be sold for ~100K and does nothing else, so that people don't think it's a bug that the mech didn't drop a chassis piece.

 

[n3ctaris]

Personally I'd prefer if the elite mechs did not drop chassis pieces at all. If they're dropping Lostech, then the salvage of their lostech items should be more than enough reward.

As far as naming goes, if you check SARNA you can see custom variants usually have their own name - eg, Catapult CPLT-J Jester as a custom 'hero' mech. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Catapult

EDIT: They should maybe drop some sellable item called 'Customized Mech Wreck' that could be sold for ~100K and does nothing else, so that people don't think it's a bug that the mech didn't drop a chassis piece.

I like all these thoughts, I'm afraid not dropping pieces is beyond my coding abilities as I'll just be editing some basic files.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the 'hero' mechs. I had forgotten about those. I'll look to those for inspiration.

 

[don Zappo]

There might be a way to flag a mech as dropping no chassis salvage and only weapons? I'd have to look at the jsons. I know that there is a mod out there where it rolls a percent chance for item salvage when you assemble a chassis. We could always use that to make it even less likely to obtain lostech.

Having unique variants is definitely the easiest path to go down. It does raise an issue with salvage, though, by diluting the pool. Absolutely. I wonder if we can easily control their appearance rate to make them rare in combat?

I did see the color mod was updated. May as well at it. Color blind support is nice!

 

[n3ctaris]

There might be a way to flag a mech as dropping no chassis salvage and only weapons? I'd have to look at the jsons. I know that there is a mod out there where it rolls a percent chance for item salvage when you assemble a chassis. We could always use that to make it even less likely to obtain lostech.

Having unique variants is definitely the easiest path to go down. It does raise an issue with salvage, though, by diluting the pool. Absolutely. I wonder if we can easily control their appearance rate to make them rare in combat?

I did see the color mod was updated. May as well at it. Color blind support is nice!

Let me know what you find. I'll start building them with their own variant's as the inventory aspect will be the longest part of the build. If we can end up flagging it as only weapons and no chassis or some kind of % chance when assembled that can be done later.

I still like the idea of getting all the salvage from one chassis type (ie all jenners) into a pool then building it and randomly getting a variant. We could just make these elite mechs count as a 'part' but not a legal 'variant' on construction. I know we saw some resistance to randomization of the build process...

 

[Morricane]

I don't think that will help - usually morale ends up going max pretty quick as soon as you start killing enemies, especially vehicles and turrets. Precision shot itself helps here, as it lets you pop a mech each time you use it by concentrating fire on center torso with a close range spec assault mech. This gives ~30? morale back right away just for using precision shot, letting you use the next one.

EDIT: I guess a lot of that comes from most mechs you fight having 50% or even 25% armor to start with, making them paper thin.

Actually...why not just tone down the points you get for actions? Like for example halve the morale boost you gain from trashing mechs. No need to adjust the ability costs then

 

[ryanzag]

Actually...why not just tone down the points you get for actions? Like for example halve the morale boost you gain from trashing mechs. No need to adjust the ability costs then

That works, but isn't it kind of boring? So you use it once about half way through the fight, and then maybe you can use it again to finish off the last mech and then mission ends. And to do that one use a bit earlier in the fight, you gave up big chunks of money every month to keep morale up.

Still feels broken, but at least it wouldn't be overpowered then, so it's an improvement. But we can do a lot better, I think.

 

[don Zappo]

My updated thoughts on morale:

Definite Inclusion

• MedTechSkill and MechTechSkill adjustment based upon monthly budget. Right now I am simply trying it to the morale modifier: Skill = Skill - (Skill * MoraleMod * 0.1).

That is it for definite Inclusion. It will address the a big issue and establish a foundation to build from.

Most likely to be added:

• Monthly morale reset (updated with event compatibility).
• Morale combat adjustments mod.

This seems like a good core feature to balance our other adjustments around. We need to establish early on what to do for global morale baseline to know what to tweak and how.

Combat and More Effects
I am largely undecided on this point. You have all been having an interesting discussion on this. I still favor desyncing abilities from morale expenditure. It may be gated behind a morale level and then go on a 2 turn counter or something. I like having straight buffs and malus to to-hit values at the first tier of sadness/happiness. +1 only. Should have some other impact for full morale or nothing morale. This part may be solved by not me. You have some very good opinions here.

 

[ryanzag]

Sounds good to me. For the short term, it might be a good idea to do either of these 2 things

A) nerf how much +morale you get in combat from damaging / killing enemy mechs too, at least until a better change can be made. Right now there is just too much emphasis on chaining together called shot abilities to one shot enemy mechs.

B) Alternatively, changing the -50% and -75% armor penalties to -15% and -30% or something like that would mean that a single called shot to center torso wouldn't be enough to always core a mech. Or -35% and -55% if you want to be less extreme..

Both options do increase the difficulty a lot because of just how much we rely on using called shot to kill off enemy mechs in tough situations (probably more than you think!)

 

[don Zappo]

How long into the game are mechs broken and falling apart during battles?

 

[ryanzag]

All the way, I think? They get less and less, but you can still see them pop up even in 5 star missions as reinforcements.